Battlescape development

[Daiky]

And maybe they speak with text balloons? They give you quests which you can complete and get a reward in money to generate additional income this way ... I'm getting carried away 

[luke83]

 TEXT BUBBLE "i think i soiled myself,  Go to my cupboard and get me some clean underpants"

[kkmic]

This is a little bit off-topic but...

VIP rescue anyone? Maybe some important person managed to get into town when the alien terror ship arrived. Bonus points for rescuing him and extra penalty on failure? Some armed bodyguards too?

[luke83]

Yes i have been thinking of the same things for Random missions. I need to get version 1 of my terror maps finished so i can get back to making some more different sprites.

[luke83]

We must be getting close to version 0.4 , what other features are we waiting on until we hit that milestone ?

[Conti-k]

Would be really nice to add civilians to Farm missions (I'm doing houses for them after all ).  Magical "true" in options.cfg may do the trick, and will keep purists happy

[Daiky]

I've enabled the Graph button - instant terror mission in the latest build for the people already wanting to peak around in a terror mission. I will disable it again later.
Use at own risk :p

[luke83]

Use at own risk is correct, when i select graphs the game crashes instantly

[Daiky]

I tried a clean installation and the latest git build and works fine with me...

[luke83]

Maybe its my large FRNITURE MCD, or something else i have done over the last  6 months i will start with the original ufo files later and test that , if it works i will change one file at a time

[luke83]

Fresh install works , my new maps don't

UPDATE:  When i add my Mixed MCD,PCK,TAB file terror map still loads.
I add one of my new maps to the possible mix and aslong as its not used there is no issue. However after 3 working maps, the forth must of used my NEW map and it crashed.

Worth noting is the Aliens love grenades in Terror Sites !    Also your AI is a Bitch , i was just trying to run over the map to find the map blocks i modded as a test and those sectiod and Discs gunned me down everytime. If sectoids and Discs are that bloody hard  i dont want to see what the  mutons are going to do to me

Second Update:
After much testing, the  MCD data is fine, see attached Disco road , as soon as a added my NEW ( 3 levels of underground )road Map file  the game crashes everytime. Daiky is there something else missing to allow multi levels to work?

[Conti-k]

I'm guessing it's a WIP feature, but I'd like share some thoughts about AI after one month I've spent on testing OpenXcom.

- AI is throwing grenades like a mad (at least during terror missions). Nothing is safe, including... Aliens! Awesome! I'm HUGE fan of battlefield chaos, and unpredictable situations.

- AI sometimes (correct placement on the map) is trying to kill units inside of crafts (gaps roof/floor <==> walls original design flaw?), but it's wasting TUs only.

- AI way too much is doing nothing. It can stand next to my unit for a few turns without any reaction, or is moving back and forth, making it super easy to kill. Reaction fire on my units movement seems to work better than AI's actions during its turn.

-----------------------EDIT

Of course, it doesn't happen all the time. But sometimes AI is simply standing, and waiting to be killed, even if has my units few tiles away, and could successfully kill them. Unpredictable AI is super cool, but "idling" happens too often.

[Daiky]

luke83: mind that your soldiers are rookies on their first mission - try to run around in plain field on a terror site with noob units and no armor in the original game... it will hurt Soon the rulesets are externalized and then I suggest you to modify all armor to 999 and test your maps without casualties

If you think the game crashes with one of your maps, and looks like a bug in the game, I can have a look at it if you send me your maps.

Conti-k, I know those 3 issues you mention and eventually I'll hope to get around polishing the AI a bit more later on, but I've put it a bit lower on my list of todo.

[Conti-k]

@ luke83

Save, and load game - Sectoids will lost weapons. Dunno about Cyberdisks though.

Conti-k, I know those 3 issues you mention

No, no, no. Throwing grenades like a mad isn't an issue! Don't change that. It's great that Aliens are actually using grenades. I was happy seeing grenades often used against civilians (terror must look like a terror ). Plus it produces great effects, like killing own dudes by accident (shit like this should happen on the battlefield). But if you think this isn't good then you may put some conditions how often throwing will occur, for example, certain races (like Mutons) may use grenades more often than other ones (like Ethereals). Aggression, or Intelligence may be used as conditions to determine a chance of throwing grenade as well.

and eventually I'll hope to get around polishing the AI a bit more later on, but I've put it a bit lower on my list of todo.

Of course. There's no reason to be hurry with it. I'm just trying to give some constructive feedback.

[luke83]

I love the grenade mad aliens , for the first time in many years the terror mission was actually terrifying